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Monthly Archives: September 2011

According to Steve Blank customer development is “the process startups use to quickly iterate and test each element of their business model.” The idea is that dreaming up features for your product is all well and good until faced with the reality of a customer: what you think the market needs and what the market…

At the end of each quarter we push hard to finish strong and win deals in the pipeline. Unlike many technology companies, we don’t discount and do end-of-the quarter specials to achieve a goal that pulls demand from future quarters. The success of any one quarter is determined well in advance of the quarter based…

Casually, I’m helping out a local first-time entrepreneur that has been working full-time on his idea for the past two months and is now focusing on raising an angel round. Earlier today he sent over his investor slide deck that covers the executive summary information as well as product details and brief financials. There was…

Earlier today a successful serial entrepreneur emailed me saying she was going to expand her sales team and to see if I had any recommendations. High quality sales reps, much like strong programmers, are always in short supply, regardless of the macroeconomic condition (and coincidentally are the two most complementary skills to have for startup…

Hiring sales people is one of the more difficult things for startup founders, especially technical ones. Naturally, sales reps are great at selling themselves so they come across as being successful, even if they aren’t. Knowing that it’s considered good if 50% of new inside sales reps work out, it’s important to evaluate progress and…

Finding great employees is hard. Very hard. As a startup CEO, recruiting great talent is one of the three most important functions. In addition, a strong corporate culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage, and it starts with the team members. Here are some quick tips for finding employees: Referrals – referrals from employees, friends,…

I know of at least three successful email marketing companies that started out as web design firms doing custom web app development. As with most startups, the ideas that result in success come from trying something first that didn’t work out (from personal experience, my original business idea has never been what resulted in success).…